How the Sabbath was Changed to Sunday
By V.J. Berry
Copyright 2017
The
first recorded Sabbath is found in Genesis 2:1-3 – “Thus
the heavens and the earth were completed in their entire vast array.
2 By
the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh
day he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the
seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of
creating that he had done” (NIV). This was to be a day of rest for both mankind
and animals and it was set aside as holy to allow people to rest their bodies
and have time to worship and concentrate on God. The seventh day (Sabbath)
starts at sundown on Friday and concludes at Saturday/s sunset and this command
is part of the Jewish law (Zondervan, 2009, p.806). The Christian Sabbath
begins at midnight Saturday and ends at midnight Sunday. In this essay,
Following is the history of the Sabbath and how it was never authorized by God
to be changed to Sunday (Webb, 2008). [This is a matter of history, not an
attack or judgment on the Roman Catholic Church (RCC)].
There is a misconception about the Sabbath being for Jews only.
The first Sabbath came about by God’s directive following the sixth day of Creation.
Jesus said in Mark 2:27 that the Sabbath was made for Man. No ethnic group is
mentioned. Adam and Eve were not Jews and it was nearly 3,000 years from the
Creation before “Jews” appeared on the scene (Coulter, 2013). Another factor
about the Creation is that Jesus was there. “In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him
nothing was made that has been made“(John 1: 1-3). Jesus declares
Himself “Lord of the Sabbath” (Mark 2: 27-28): “Then he said
to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the
Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord
even of the Sabbath.” Paul declared
“There remains Sabbath keeping for the people of God” (1 Peter 2: 10: “ Once
you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not
received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
Returning to the Old Testament, we
see that Abraham was pleasing to God because he obeyed God in all things and
James in the New Testament calls him “the Friend of God” (James 2:23). In
Exodus 16, we see that the Sabbath is being observed before the Ten
Commandments were given to Moses that included the fourth commandment regarding
the Sabbath. The people were instructed to gather manna as needed for each of
five days, but on the sixth day, they were to collect enough for that day and
the next day which would be the Sabbath.
This shows that Sabbath was still being observed since Creation
(Coulter, 2013).
The Sabbath law also reminded the Israelites that God was the
Creator and provider of all they had and by setting this day aside for a
special purpose, it gave them as humans a sense of holiness and a sense of
agelessness in worshiping their Creator (Ex. 20:8-11); Hill & Walton, 2009,
p.138). However, by the time of Jesus,
the legalism of Judaism had concealed the humanitarian and practical benefits
of the Sabbath or outright removed them (Matt. 12: 1-4; Mark 7: 1-13; Hill &
Walton, p. 138). The Jews had forgotten or ignored that the Sabbath was made
for Man and did not (or would not) understand that spiritual work that included
acts of healing and aiding the poor on the Sabbath glorified God as good works
on the Sabbath (Coulter, 2013). Coulter (2014) says the “Sabbath is a day of
blessing as it was in the beginning and a day of redemption and salvation.”
Jesus observed the Sabbath as was the custom and an example of
this is in Luke 4:16 which records his appearance at the Nazareth synagogue
where He read from the Scriptures and He journeyed to Capernaum where He taught
on the Sabbath (Luke 4:31-32). Jesus taught many times on the Sabbath. At
Creation, He had made the Sabbath a blessing for all mankind and Jesus used it
for teaching, preaching, healing, and exorcising demons, all for ridding people
of sin (Coulter, 2013). The last command of Jesus before He ascended into
Heaven was to tell his apostles to “teach and do only those things they had
learned from Him.” There was neither a mention of changing the Sabbath to Sunday,
nor did the apostle teach it (Coulter, 2013). In summary of the apostles, as an
examples: when Paul was teaching in Greece, he found that the Gentiles were
already observing the Sabbath. He also taught Gentiles to keep the Sabbath. In
Philippi (Macedonia), Luke said they went to a river on the Sabbath and taught
there (Acts 16:12-13).
It was about 300 years following the era of the apostles that the
Emperor Constantine (as a Roman Catholic}instituted Sunday (first day of the
week) as the Christian Sabbath, separating them from the traditional Sabbath
ordered by God . The Roman Catholic Church boldly announced that it moved the
Sabbath to Sunday by its own authority to commemorate the Resurrection of
Jesus. Following are quoted questions and answers from the Roman Catholic
doctrinal and catechism documents.
Question:
Which is the Sabbath day?
Answer: Saturday is the Sabbath day.
Question: Why do we worship on Sunday
instead of Saturday?
Answer: We observe
Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church, in the Council of
Laodicea (A.D. 336), transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday.
Question: Have you a way
of proving that the Church [Roman Catholic] has the power to institute
festivals of precept?
Answer: Had she no such
power, she should not have done that in which all modern religion agree with
her – she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of
week,, for the observance of Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which
there is no Scriptural authority (Doctrine et al., 1927, pp. 50, 147
Following are two quotes found in Coulter (2013): “The
Scriptures nowhere call the first day of the week the Sabbath . . . There is no
Scriptural authority for so doing, nor of course any Scriptural obligation”
(The Baptist Watchman, n.d.) and “The observation of the first instead of the
seventh day rests on the testimony of the church and the church alone” (Hobort
Church News [Episcopalian], 1894). There are some Protestant churches that
observe Saturday as the Sabbath such as Seventh Day Adventists and some
Baptists and others. It has been suggested by various church denominations such
as the Seventh Day Adventist that the Protestant churches apparently were so
accustomed to worshipping on Sunday, that when the separation from the Roman
Catholic Church occurred during the Reformation, they did not return to God’s
Sabbath, so they carry the baggage imposed by the Roman Catholic Church,
unaware or not. ). [Because the
Protestant Church made no objection to changing the Sabbath day, the RCC
believed they had additional authority for the change].
From the Encyclopedia Britannica under the
article, Sunday. Notice: “It was Constantine who first made a law for the
proper observance of Sunday and who appointed that it should be regularly
celebrated throughout the Roman Empire.” When Constantine pressed his pagan hordes into the
church, they were observing the day of the sun for their adoration of the sun
god. It was their special holy day. In order to make it more convenient for them
to make the change to the new religion, Constantine accepted their day of
worship, Sunday, instead of the Christian Sabbath which had been observed by
Jesus and His disciples (Crews, 2003).
Conclusion
God
blessed the seventh day following His Creation. This is the day that He chose
for us to rest and not to worry about laboring but to worship Him. This is a
scared time to fellowship with our Creator. God did not change or authorize a
change from the seventh day to the first day of the week, replacing His
ordained Sabbath. The Roman Catholic Church in concert with Constantine made
the change on its own authority. Many Protestant churches carried this custom
into their doctrines, perhaps not realizing their error.
References
Hill, A.E. & Walton, J.H.
(2009). A survey of the Old Testament.
Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan.
Life
Application Study Bible (NIV). (2005). Carol Stream,
IL: Tyndale House Publishers.
Zondervan
Handbook to the Bible (4th ed.). (2009). Grand
Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
Electronic sources:
Coulter,
F.R. (2013). Which
day is the true Christian Sabbath–the true Lord’s Day: The seventh-
day of the
week, or the first day of the week? Retrieved from
http://cbcg.org/true_sabbath.htm
Doctrinal
Catechism, (1927).
The
Convert’s Catechism of Catholic Doctrine. (1927).
Doctrinal
Catechism and The Convert’s Catechism of Catholic Doctrine.
(1927 ed
Sabbath Truth (2003). How the Sabbath was changed. Joe Crews
Radio Sermon Library.
Webb, A. (2008). When does the Christian Sabbath begin and end? Retrieved from
http://biblebased.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/when-does-the-christian-sabbath-begin-and-end/
